Sabotage Incidents in Jerusalem and West Bank; No Injuries Reported

May 12, 1975

JERUSALEM (May. 11)

An explosive charge went off this morning in an empty lot between East Jerusalem and the Jewish quarter of Musrara. No one was hurt and there was no damage, This was the latest in a series of sabotage attempts which have taken place recently in Jerusalem and its environs. Less than 24 hours earlier, another bomb was found in the religious quarter of Mea Shearim. The relatively small bomb was dismantled yesterday morning by Jerusalem’s Deputy Police Chief, Zvi Ben Eliyahu, even before the bomb squad arrived. In this case too, there was no damage, and no one was hurt.

Meanwhile, Israeli police and border patrols were today conducting a massive search of the Bar Giroa area, in the western slopes of the Judaea hills along the railway line to Jerusalem, after the line was sabotaged during the night causing a locomotive to overturn in which the engineer and his assistant were injured, According to the railway’s authority in Haifa the rail ties were deliberately loosened during the night causing the freight train on its way to Jerusalem to overturn and block the rail line. Workers cleared the rail line during the day.

In other acts of sabotage an explosive charge was discovered and dismantled before it exploded near the labor exchange office in Hebron. An Egged bus was set afire in the center of Ramallah while its driver, an Israeli Arab was sipping coffee in a nearby cafe. Several people were detained. In the Hebron area a military vehicle hit a mine but no injuries were reported. Curfew was imposed and a search for the culprits was launched.